


They Have Been Exhumed

by Aminias



Series: I Fought Whole Galaxies For You [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Creature Stiles, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Imagery, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Peter gets a hug, Stiles why did you go make a deal with a geat magical entity and not read the fine print, fix it kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 11:00:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10638474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aminias/pseuds/Aminias
Summary: (Standalone)There are wet tears soaking his designer shirt and snot covering the expensive fabric. He can't find it in himself to care."Shh...darling, shh." He rocks the boy. Stiles is skin and bones, hollow sunken spaces; hot to the touch, despite the chill around them.Peter’s cradling a baby bird that is taking the first fluttering leaps towards flight.His hand falls easily around the boy and if he clenches his fingers any tighter, that windpipe will constrict, crushed beneath his grip





	

**Author's Note:**

> A sort of stand-alone sequel to All of Your Flaws
> 
> Huge thanks to Slasher_Fiend for all of their help!!!!
> 
> If I missed anyone who dropped in on this my love to them too

“You’re a freak, Stilinski.”

“Freaking good you mean.”

Peter narrowed his eyes. Across the field, a tall athletic kid with Whittmore across the back of his jersey sneered down at Stiles. Interesting. Stiles, Peter had noticed, was actually rather tall, _nearly_ taller than Peter. It’s otherworldly how fast he’s shot up. He should be at the very least close to surpassing the Whittemore boy in height. Instead, he appeared curled in on himself; Peter could discern the slight trembling in his shoulders. He scented the air; the smell of sweat and testosterone permeating the air.

 

“Bilinski, that performance was all kinds of out of this world.”

“Really, Jackson?” the teen panted, leaning heavily on his lacrosse stick.

“Yes, get off my field before you take out the rest of the team with your incompetence,” Jackson mimed.

Stiles huffed out a laugh, bitter and mocking, gunning for the other kid's ego. He seemed sure of himself, uncowed, as he leaned on his lacrosse stick into Jackson's space, amusement palpable. . .

_ Oh. _ thought Peter.   _ Not afraid.  _ No; he realigned his picture of Stilinski in his head from fanciful to a threat. Stiles is in prime position to rip out the Whittemore boy’s throat with his smiling teeth. 

Stiles is a being with a steel core, a raging inferno so hot, but a source of constant wonder. A multitude of colors and triumphs. A fallacy of space so far from earth yet so close.

 

The trembling shoulders were from strain and the muscles protesting being so tense.

_ If I just stretch my hand out I have you in my grasp.   _

“Oh,  is that code for ‘Get off this field that is public, taxpayer property?” The boy cheekily began. “Scared I might beat you Jackson?  Too late for that last one,” Stilinski finished.  

 

Jackson took an angry step forward, but the coach called for more drills before he could follow through with any threats. 

 

Stiles words  are cracked, every utterance falls meteors against the ozone.

Peter knows he is nothing so fleeting as a comet and imagines a time when Stiles will stop trying to pass for barren rock. It’s rare he finds a being so interesting. 

He searches his memory to no avail. 

Peter can hardly remember  _ any time  _ at all where he did.

* * *

 

_ Sometimes, _ (all the time) he can’t fathom why he puts up with people. 

Stiles Stilinski isn’t people. Who else would be rambling so. 

"I don't have time for this; do you know his password or not?"

"Time, _ time _ ; it's all about time with you," Stiles snapped, eyes the same shade of harsh as his voice. His heartbeat was even, if beating rabbit fast, and Peter’s interest only grew.

_ Just what was Stilinski talking about? _

"Patience is a virtue; haven't I waited long enough?" Peter offered in reply. He knew the boy rambled but this was an unexpected turn. It couldn’t be drugs, Stiles wasn’t the type, he didn’t smell like that certain brand of misery. 

Misery. Now that Peter looked for, the scent poured off the teenager a great chasm of soul deep agony. Curious. 

The boy was still grumbling; something about how there is never enough time or not right now. Followed by a garbled amount of sounds that may have been a name. 

This Stiles was some phantom of the grave slipping through the coffins, eroding the cage. A creature that found a crack in the wood and danced folly in. Not wrong but not right either. 

"Always calling me sweetheart and darling, calling, constantly calling," the boy mutters, seemingly to thin air. A rhapsody to a fallen lover. Peter is no such lover. 

The carport suddenly feels like a waiting room, high walls of white, the echo of heartbeats. 

Peter grind his teeth together skin prickling. 

_ He liked this one.  _  It took a lot to remember: picking him up, shaking him would not make Stiles move faster or Peter's revenge come any closer. Besides, that was such a distasteful course of action. . . he wasn’t his nephew.

 

To take the boy now would be writing ruin. Stiles is not a glossy spread on a 8 3⁄8” x 10 7⁄8 magazine, economical and printed to a high quality shine that feels lesser after two dollars spending price. 

 

He is the sort of  _ Never Ending _ story Peter likes to sequester himself with and trace hands gently across the cover, smiling softly to the paper rustles during that dry afternoon. Would Stiles turn so easily under his touch as those pages? Is the boy even here at all? 

 

Concrete walls them in but he knows this is empty space. 

He can feel it with that breath that now in fact, suddenly it is _ nothing _ within  _ something _ rather than  _ something _ in  _ nothing _ . His nails itch to become claws and his teeth wish to sharpen. 

The hunt is on.

 

The parking garage was dimly lit, and where they stood the fluorescents flickered in time to Stiles’s words. Around them the night closed in; the scent of anger, desperation, annoyance swirled, cloying with the cool breeze.  _ He needed to bite the boy, his fangs stirred. Bite the boy and be strong. Build the pack. Pack first.  _

"Stiles."

"Oh, so it's Stiles again?" More history lingers behind those words then their short time together allows.  For a moment he thinks the boy will cave and share whatever weighs on him but it passes. He best press his advantage then 

“Hasn’t it always been?” Peter countered, his eyes can track the tremors of Stiles’ skin when the boys flusters. Each shudder is the warning of a chime caught by the wind unable to escape the string. This craftsmanship is masterful for the parts twirling around each other, melodious screech racking up dinks in the glass like hopes in a rain gauge. 

"Huh." The boy scrunched his eyebrows, biting his bottom lip. 

"My bad." His figure seems to slump in on itself. 

"Your bad?" Peter echoed tilting his head. He smirked to cover his confusion, his nails itching into claws.  _  Flicker _ went the fluorescents.

Stiles’ plush lips drew together, annoyed eyebrows eschew.

"Right. So, you were going to ask me something."

"That offer’s closed."

"What!" Stiles yelps. "What do you mean ‘closed’?"

"I changed my mind." Peter purrs, tugging the boy's wrist in and brushing a kiss over his racing pulse.  _ Shame, arousal, curiosity, anger, arousal. _ That's not a ‘yes’ though, and Peter’s a gentleman.

"Oh," breathes Stiles, mouth falling open, red dusting his cheeks.

"Mhm,” Peter answers, pleased.

“When you're ready, love, come find me.”

_ I will give it to you; everything you've ever wanted. _

“Right then. . . I'll just do that," the boy drawled, eyes framed by his lashes, fingers rubbing his free wrist; his heartbeat never wavered.

“You'll make a stunning wolf.”

Then, like any proper Disney villain, he makes a dramatic exit. 

“Peter!” Stiles shouts. The boy,  _ not boy _ ,  is left standing in the cold, arm drawn up to himself. He strains,  there is nothing to hear but a rasp, the mummer of meteorites hurtling beyond planets. 

* * *

 

_ Sometimes _ when he startles Stiles Peter thinks he catches a glimpse of galaxies. It’s a strange thought, to find such a wholly massive thing in one boy. He seeks him out in a fight: that certain blackness, the efficiency of the swinging bat, dangerous like touching the sun. 

 

Peter used to gaze up at the stars matching the sky in each constellation, but he lost his heading. 

He knows many things about the world, about before. 

Then came the coma, and he wandered  _ there _ , locked in the realm of his mind. 

Wandered  _ there _ and fell stumbling into the beyond. The light and shadows play on a loop in the fading darkness of his room when he attempts to rest. 

What was it he truly encountered  _ there _ ? Who's to say he didn't bring some of  _ there _ back?

That's all the reason he can discern for the existence of one Stiles Stilinski.

 

This is  _ something  _ he muses on as he watches Stiles break into the Sheriff's office.

"We're not so unlike you and me."

Stiles jumps and smacks his head into the cabinet.

He's beauty and grace, falling flat on his face. Peter chuckles to himself.

"Jesus."

"While I did rise from the grave, I assure you my feet were much more impressive."

"Uhuh, but there are just as many holes in you; in fact, if I held you under water, I wager you'd sink." 

"Stiles, don't be crass. It doesn't suit you."

"Cloak and dagger deception does? Thought that was more your shtick."

"Ah, I suppose you’re Professor Plumb in the library with a candlestick then."

Stiles freezes. _ That's right. I know.  _ Hands twitching over a file, his head snaps up, and he glares.

"Why are you here again?"

"As protection."

"For me?" Silly boy thinking Peter had missed the glee in his eyes.

"No, for them." He jabs. Really the boy ought to not look so upset it's a compliment. 

Stiles's mouth clicks shut and he doesn't ask who  _ they _ are.

That's well enough with Peter, who isn't sure who  _ ‘they _ ’ are anymore either, are  _ ‘they _ ’ the nephew that abandoned him, the niece that was never there, the boy who cries wolf,  the landlady who trembles when she sees his scars?

* * *

 

Sometimes Peter shudders into wakefulness, sheets clinging to his body late in the evening and he puzzles. He cannot know whether it was a dream or nightmare that woke him. The truth can often be both.  Giving up the temptation of sleep in his warm bed isn’t as much a hardship as he first figured.

 

Peter knows what he can expect. 

Stiles will be haunting the Preserve. It's own willowy teenage spector and Peter will join him before he can think the better of it. 

 

Simply wouldn’t do to lose the boy to just any old flavor of the week beast. 

That’s what he tells himself. 

 

He keeps being drawn back to Stilinski sure as the earth orbits the sun. 

 

Pirates the both of them are at first, trading fierce grappling hook edges sharpened to a cutting barb, each attempting to pierce the walls of the other’s vessel.  Stiles does not blunt his words nor back down from Peter’s no matter how sharp they get. 

 

The boy is willy as any Pirate Captain from an old adventure book. Though he doesn’t often admit to it Stiles has about  the same amount of scruples too. 

He imagines Stiles can hear it as he strides forth, coats rustling the length of a ship deck. 

Each step testing the wood as it creaked beneath his feet, examining workmanship scrapped under boot heel.  It is a fantasy he could become entrapped by and curls around him elusive as memory. There was a time. 

 

Peter shakes himself. Here he is parked outside a warehouse with Stiles on one side.

Usually he’d be minus the car but he’d been running a few more errands before finding the boy. 

On one side he leans against the car, on the other the Preserve and night sky stretching before them.

Almost romantic if not for the pain he can smell from the figure beside him. 

“I’m not hurt.” This beautiful boy attempts, his hair shorn and his eyes fractured, mouth open, lips worrying. Peter arches an eyebrow. 

“Ok, so not hurt now.”  His heart is galloping much too fast, he clenches his hoodie string with white knuckles. He’s going to have to try harder than that to fool this wolf. 

“Liar,” Peter mocked. 

“Don’t we make a pair,” Stiles fires back. 

Peter knows he is the wake that comes after Talia's ire. That’s when they realize he cannot change,  _ will not change  _ (maybe won’t). That the instance of these teenagers won’t change, neither will his conscious effort to remind him of revenge. 

He is to be left to rage as a single wave among an ocean of dissent.

He expects it as the last heir to take the families due.  The last willing. 

Peter acknowledges then, knows then. That when the waves slink back to a dull splash and the glint of the waters is lackluster, the air fallow and dead it will be his fault.  

Revenge is best served cold. 

“Indeed, truth seeker.”  

“Stop.”

“Too much?” Peter understands the urge to prize the things that are taken more than what’s been offered.  Someone decided to take from Stiles, take when Peter has offered.  

They won't ever again. 

Stiles leaned against the Jeep, gazing up at the stars in lieu of an answer.

“Who were they?” Peter asks.

Stiles goes still, hands falling from where they twisted in his shirt. Who put those shadows under your eyes and left those scars beneath your skin? Who -- Peter can’t dream it. 

“Who was who?” Stiles evades. 

“Them.” He takes a step forward, the boy's body jerks and he disguises it by resting further on the vehicle. Clever. 

“Who was anyone?” 

“Who are they, then?” Peter tries, not dissuaded in the least.

“I don’t remember.”  _ I won't tell you. It's too late, there's nothing you can do. _

Peter narrowed his eyes.

Stiles bit his lip. “Forget it.”

“That’s exact opposite of what you just said, oxymoron.” Peter gently pressed.

“Their voice.”

“Whose voice Stiles?” Peter carefully prodded. 

“His. . . I can hear it.” Stiles tugged his hair, shoulders tense, body trembling. 

“Telling me how pretty I am.” The boy's gaze was fixed somewhere far off, his mouth twisted into a sneer, words bitter as a freshly bitten lemon. Peter shifts, he can feel Stiles’ light. 

Each moment with him is a hand's breadth from reaching illumination, rays drawn out to weigh on Peter in years, though this is not something he would trade.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Stiles. . .”

“I’m done waiting.” The boy inhales taking a deep breath. When he finally exhales it was white and ragged, a flag of surrender taken by the night air.

“I want the bite.”

Peter turns his gaze skyward. The heavens won't hold answers for him anymore than they do for Stilinski, but the boy looks like he's ready to trade the Devil Below his soul. 

That simply won't do.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No, not like this.”  _ The night sky may have placed the stars in your eyes but it didn't ask me to help you stow their light.   _ Everything is all wrong and he’ll have no part in this folly. 

“Then what use are you!” Stiles shouts, sagging as if all his strings had been cut.

Peter kneels; he has bowed to no sovereign before, and he won't now. Peter has this thing about giving people exactly what they want. He knows Stiles does, too.

He lays a hand on the boy’s shoulder and Stiles flings himself into Peter's lap; so starved is he.

There are wet tears soaking his designer shirt and snot covering the expensive fabric. He can't find it in himself to care.

"Shh...darling, shh." He rocks the boy. Stiles is skin and bones, hollow sunken spaces; hot to the touch, despite the chill around them. 

Peter’s cradling a baby bird that is taking the first fluttering leaps towards flight. 

His hand falls easily around the boy and if he clenches his fingers any tighter, that windpipe will constrict, crushed beneath his grip.

* * *

 

_ Sometimes  _ cease to be. 

Peter falls just as he’d risen from the ash and finds things changed. Stiles is less rounded out by wit and some of the night sky now lingers in the shadow of his glares. If Peter listens carefully he can almost hear a soft tune whenever the younger man's nearby.  Notes deceptively high strung and light then sharp and final. The song of death. The boy has made some kind of deal, Peter’s just not sure with what. 

Everything has predictably gone south at the High School, as usual.

The others screaming down the various halls; just him and Stiles in the bowels of the building with a monster. Peter once had the fortune of seeing a puppet show when he was younger. The characters dangling from a myriad of string, babbling inane things at the controller's whim. 

Watching Stiles echoes the experience. 

One moment he was there, then he couldn’t have been.

_ Did he move? _

 

The shadows in the hallway blur, kissing Peter’s skin. His flesh pebbles, hairs raising, his lips curling into a snarl. Briefly, the darkness embraces Stilinski from all corners, shadows crowding him like prospective suitors. The beast across from them heaves and its feet click on the tile, nose twitching, gaze swinging to focus on Stiles.

 

The boy’s eyes are black, not in the nature of demons though Peter still tenses. 

 

_ Fathomless  _ was Peter's first thought. No; Stiles’ orbs simply appear black at first glance.

The way a black hole appears empty till you reach the center. 

The further you dive in, the more passes by. Peter is so used to every inch of Stiles being a hurricane that facing the literal eye of the storm only to find a tornado is. . . unsettling.

 

He does mean it literally; there is nothing figurative about the calculation within those pupils’ depths. The way he can almost feel the raging winds on his skin or how gooseflesh prickled at the unnatural stillness, the air of dead winter stealing away his breath. There is a quiet that settles over Stilinski. A methodicalness he puts on, like his favorite flannel or Peter might wickedness. 

 

It could have been minutes, seconds, an hour. Time twists itself into a wobbling mass. Peter blinks and there is Stiles before him and the corpse of a monster nearby. 

 

The boy is shaking more then a ship in the middle of a storm, eyes glancing from his hands to Peter. Seeking Peter as his heading. He cannot resist.

“Shush darling come here.” Stiles takes several unsteady steps towards him, a baby dear uneasy on its feet. Those wide brilliant eyes never leave his. It’s intoxicating being the center of Stiles’ universe.  Peter wraps himself around Stiles. The boy is glowing softly. It is eerie and perplexing how one of so much shadow can be comprised of so much light. 

“You smell like blood.” Peter began to gently knead circles into the flesh with his hand, examining his nails. 

“That has nothing to do with it,” Stiles attempted.  **Blip** went his heart beat. A two year old could detect that lie.

Peter couldn’t deny that his own heart rate skyrocketed, his mouth went dry.

He tries not to think of that dark brown hair, those wild pale limbs, how in the midst of a fight Stiles is constantly whipping about in a self-made wind with reckless abandon, his bat swinging  just as wild as its owner’s smile.

“Don’t you have better things to be doing?” Is the muffled question against his shirt.

“I’ll have you know, I do plenty of things in my spare time.” Peter stated, predominantly working on his revenge and seducing Stiles to the darkside, for instance. Though maybe the other way around. Peter can’t say he minds. 

“Like what?”  The boy challenged lifting up his head. 

“Jerk off.” He leered. 

Stiles choked. There was the laughter and red flush he was used to. 

“Seriously,” he sputtered taking a step away from Peter and shaking his head. 

“What even?” The boy laughed.  

“Productive things,” Peter waved off, sinking enough innuendo into that to make a call-girl blush. The amusement written on Stiles’ face almost made the loss of contact worth it. 

“Work the trash disposal? Because you're long over due to be taken out.” 

“Why? Are you offering?” Peter drawled.

Stiles tilted his head, curious, and took a step towards him, almost hovering on an unseen border between them. Just when had he gotten so close again? 

Peter has never been one to mince words. 

He’s always considered himself tenacious, a go-getter,  _ Peter has a pack to be building.  _

Right now, for the third time in his life, he’s a burning man.

He reaches not for water, but for more kerosene. Stiles is fire and he isn’t bathing in him, he is dousing himself.  

Every inch of him is ignited, come to life in one slight touch

Peter can smell the flesh as it melts.

He tastes the ash on his tongue, heavy and grainy, and sees the soot, black and stark, against his pale skin.

“What are you doing?” Stiles questions. 

Peter leans into his space, and it’s not with his usual leer, but with promise beyond the sheets..

“Something productive.” The tilt of his head was a dare, a silent question: who would back away first?  _ Not him. _ Though they would be discussing just what was up with Stiles and why parts of him shined pale and bright as stars.

 

Stiles took a small step forward; his heart pounding almost nervously, he too leaned in. 

A riot of emotions swept through him. What was he even turning into?  

He hadn’t been  signing up for this with the deal. 

_ This is really going to happen, they are going to...  _

Their lips brush almost tentative at first, when Stiles didn’t pull away, Peter tugs and Stiles cedes as a falcon coming to heel. 

They meet roughly, close, there is rawness to this. Peter can taste iron on his tongue and he can't stop himself from letting Stiles swoop in for more. The air leaves, his focus narrows, their jagged edges slotting into something new and he can’t breath for fear of shattering it. 

 

Peter has curled a hand into Stiles’ hair at one point and tugged him desperately back in. 

Every time their mouths meet it is like coming home. This feels right, and Stiles relaxes, playfully nipping at Peter's lips. 

 

The breathy moan he gets in response to the kiss is well worth the wait. Peter chuckled.

In the next moment he can barely think. They wrapped around each other so tightly every part of his body sings, a live wire charged with electricity and purpose. 

  
  


Of one thing Stiles is sure of: Peter is not a good man but neither is he. A man or good. Not after tonight that is. He can feel eons of extraterrestrial  intelligence coursing through him.

Good men do not relish a fight but accept it as a duty. They do not wipe blood from their claws with an ease to rival the devil’s swindling of souls. 

 

Right now Peter doesn’t care about any of it duty, honor, valor all of it’s nonsense. 

Those who  _ were _ his pack are dead. 

Stiles seems to share the sentiment, if the way he is attempting to steal his next breath away is anything to go by. 

 

Whole galaxies spread out in his eyes. To stare into them is to look beyond the scope of the ocean. To kiss him is to brush lips with the ice cold vacuum of space, breathless and burn hot with starlight.

 

Dark eyes swallow his own, eternal. Now there is only one star that flummoxes him in equal measure, as it alights him it lies at the center of this dark mass so, here is  _ there _ , here is solace, here is wherever Stiles will take him. 

 

They are destined to map each astral plane and beyond. So tightly bound together is every inch of them. It’s one hell of a hug. The eternal kind. 

 

That's fine. No matter how many galaxies beckon, no matter how great  their luster, none will be his Stiles. 

Peter will always take the black hole. 

 


End file.
